Myconid (4e Race)
Myconids[edit]
Sentient fungusmen from the deepest caverns
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| By ZeTrystan |
| Racial Traits |
| Average Height: 3'9"' to 4'6" |
| Average Weight: 50-80 lb. |
| Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom or Charisma |
| Size: Medium |
| Speed: 6 squares |
| Vision: Darkvision |
| Languages: None (See below) |
| Skill Bonuses: +2 Dungeoneering, +2 Nature |
| Rapport Spores: You can communicate telepathically with any creature that has a language, telepathy, or a similar trait and has been adjacent to you within the last 5 minutes. This group of creatures may also communicate with one another instantaneously, although you are privy to all that is said. |
| Plant Traits: You are are considered a plant for any effects that relate to the plant keyword. |
| Stun Spores: You can use stun spores as an encounter power. |
| Language Ineptitude: The mechanisms of language are completely inimical to the myconid mind. While they understand spoken language as though it had been delivered telepathically, they cannot read, write, or speak any language. Even with the aid of the most powerful magic, this barrier cannot be circumvented. |
| Fey origin: The myconids have internalized the fey magic that suffuses the Underdark. You are considered a fey creature for purposes of creature origin. |
| Stun Spores | Myconid Racial Power |
| You spread a cloud of pacifying spores to calm aggressors. | |
Encounter  Sleep
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| Minor Action | Close Blast 3 |
| Target: All creatures in Blast. | |
| Attack: Constitution, Wisdom, or Charisma +2 Vs. Will | |
Hit: The target is slowed until the end of your next turn.
Special: When you gain this power, choose Constitution, Wisdom, or Charisma as the ability score you use when making attack rolls with this power. This choice remains throughout your character’s life and does not change the power’s other effects. | |
Myconids are race of humanoid fungi who hail from the most remote of underground caverns. As a society, they are reclusive and extremely cautious in their dealings with other races, and as such are rarely seen by any other than their neighbors. Most individual myconids are diligent workers that singlemindedly spend their entire lives working for the colony, but they do have a sense of individualism - no matter how small - and occasionally decide to become adventurers.
Play a myconid if you want...
- To play a race with an unconventional method of communication.
- To play as a creature from a subterranean background.
- To be a member of a race that favors the cleric, invoker, shaman, druid, and warden classes.
Physical Qualities[edit]
Myconids are stocky humanoids with bloated, spongy flesh. Their skin tones tend towards shades of grey and tan, but occasionally include dull shades of red and purple. Their heads are topped with a fungal cap, which is usually a darker shade of the same color as the rest of their skin. Their heads are barely separate from their body, and their faces are only distinguishable as such by a pair of large eyes. Myconids have no mouths and no visible ears. They eat by standing on their food, usually while they sleep, and prefer their food slightly rotten.
Young myconids are immobile and mature rapidly, reaching their equivalent of adolescence within a year. Once they reach this point they begin to move about and work for the colony, and slowly grow to full size in the next four or five years. After this point, their aging is unpredictable: they grow as needed to fill roles missing in their colony. Myconids typically live about fifty years before showing any signs of age. At this point, their movement begins to slow and within five years they become immobile and begin to decay. A decaying myconid releases spores that grow into new myconids.
Playing a Myconid[edit]
Myconids are quick to listen, slow to talk, and even slower to act. Although they are willing to act without planning, they are much less willing to act without a firm grasp of their surroundings and situation. Recklessness is unknown to them. Those who have adventured for some length of time will learn to act with less information if the situation forces them to, but a myconid straight from the colony is likely to be cautious to a fault. In fact, they find their method of communication through telepathy preferable than speech particularly because they are cautious of the misinterpretations and problems with linguistics in speech. To them, it is an insufficient method of communication.
Myconids, especially those removed from their colony, are hard workers and prefer to finish an entire day's work in one continuous action. When the day's work is done their preferred form of recreation is a type of telepathically shared hallucination. But, without other myconids to share the experience with, they are likely to attempt to join in whatever form of recreation is common among those hosting them. They are very quick to learn the ways of the outside world when they develop an eagerness for it after getting over their suspicions.
Myconids consider most people to be their friends and enjoy large gatherings. Though loyal, they will not fight to help a friend unless to defend that friend. An enemy of a friend is not an enemy to a myconid, but someone who attacks that friend is.
Myconid Characteristics: Cautious, diligent, pacifistic, reclusive, calm, fatalistic
Names: Myconids have no language of their own, and thus have no name in the conventional sense. Adventuring myconids typically choose a name from the first culture they visit.
Myconid Adventurers[edit]
Most myconids never leave their colony, but instead spend their life working. However, though most never visit the outside world, they still prefer to keep track of events outside the colony. Colonies occasionally send scouts to explore the world and come back with stories; these scouts often join groups adventurers and spend most of their lives abroad before returning with what they know. Not all myconid adventurers are scouts - myconids have free will independent of their colony and on occasion get wanderlust. These individuals typically stay with their colony until a season where they are not needed, then strike off on their own.
Stem is a myconid cleric of a forgotten deity, a vestige of nature and decay. He found a temple to the nameless deity while out exploring the Underdark and found it's teachings quite appealing as he set out to learn more about this mysterious dead god. He believes the god has opened his eyes to what lies beyond the world, and has so relinquished his reservations to pursue it. He has ignored and disobeyed many teachings from the other myconids, breaking away from his colony. He now only has the constant suspicion he has painted a target on his back.
Grash is a myconid ranger who lives in a tangled briar filled forest. His colony's cave structure had collapsed and only he managed to survive the catastrophe. Without the colony, he grew into a reclusive hermit who saw the world as dangerous. Orcs have repeatedly intruded into the forest for hunting animals and call him the killing spore for his habbit of killing orcs who wander through the forest for too long, looking for things to hunt. He distrusts orcs and sees other races as potential threats as well.
Oro is a myconid psion who lives in a forgotten overgrown psychic temple in the Feydark, where she studies moldering psionic tomes looking to practice her craft as she seeks to grow a community of myconids there. She seeks companionship of only those of her own kind, being very suspicious of others. In her search for the right formulas, she is often forced into trips to other places and even other realms to find what she seeks. Through these travels, she sees it may be necessary to rely on others eventually when in a bind.
Myconid Utility Powers[edit]
When your myconid character gains a class utility power after 1st level, you can forgo taking a power granted to you by your class. Instead, you gain a myconid utility power of the same level or lower.
| Distress Spores | Myconid Utility 2 |
| As you take damage a puff of reddish spores erupts around you. | |
| Encounter | |
| Immediate Reaction | Burst 5 |
| Trigger: You are hit by an attack. | |
| Target: All allies within the burst. | |
| Effect: All allies within Burst get a +2 bonus to their initiative until the end of the encounter, and you may spend a healing surge. | |
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